Programmable Metasurface-based RF Chain-free 8PSK Wireless Transmitter

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel RF transmitter architecture using programmable metasurfaces that eliminates traditional RF components, achieving high data rates with reduced hardware complexity for future wireless systems.

Contribution

It presents the first implementation of a metasurface-based RF transmitter capable of 8PSK modulation without conventional RF components, demonstrating promising performance and hardware simplification.

Findings

Achieved 6.144 Mbps data rate at 4.25 GHz.

Maintained comparable BER to conventional systems.

Reduced hardware complexity by eliminating filters and mixers.

Abstract

In this letter, a wireless transmitter using the new architecture of programmable metasurface is presented. The proposed transmitter does not require any filter, nor wideband mixer or wideband power amplifier, thereby making it a promising hardware architecture for cost-effective wireless communications systems in the future. Using experimental results, we demonstrate that a programmable metasurface-based 8-phase shift-keying (8PSK) transmitter with 8*32 phase adjustable unit cells can achieve 6.144 Mbps data rate over the air at 4.25 GHz with a comparable bit error rate (BER) performance as the conventional approach without channel coding, but with less hardware complexity.